Is it really that hard to track a package?
Specifically, the Post Office. I made an online purchase on Monday. Vendor sent me the tracking number Monday night. USPS didn’t show it is active until yesterday (Thursday), and then all they showed was “label has been created”.
Today (Friday) the item arrived – the mailman just brought it o my door. But the USPS tracking website doesn’t even show the item as having left the shipper.
UPS and Fedex seem to be able to give exact and accurate indications of package status and location. After all, we’re talking about scanning a barcode and uploading it to a server. Not rocket science.
Why is it so difficult for the Post office?
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5 Answers
The post office is so horrible about that! I don’t know what their problem is, but it’s totally ridiculous.
I ordered something for my fiancé a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be delivered by the USPS. They never once updated the tracking info. The odd thing is, it ended up being delivered by FedEx.
I ordered LOTR for him last year. USPS lost it. Amazon ended up resenting it through UPS and he got it a day later.
The USPS and FedEx combined some of the deliveries for on-line orders from some retailers. I’ve found the same thing, notified label printed and . . . waiting .. . . . waiting two days . . . package shows up with no other online tracking information.
Tracking packages is a big undertaking, think it through at every step, and then the system that has to pull it all together. It’s pretty impressive.
USPS was created and laid out for mail. They handle packages as the exception and are going back now and retrofitting tracking into everything. They just started actually offering tracking like you mention not too long ago, within the last year (6 months?). Before that they just offered “Delivery confirmation” which was for senders, not receivers. It’s going to take a while to get everything up to par.
UPS and FedEx were created for packages and have offered tracking for decades, they’ve just made it incrementally better, but it’s always been a big part of their process.
funkdaddy said it perfectly.
At least for now, if you want to track a package (especially a pretty important one) the USPS should be your LAST choice regarding how it should be sent.
The Postal Service scanning system and website might someday offer accurate daily updates regarding where your package is…...
But today is not that day.
USPS tracking works great for Priority Mail and Express mail.
Not so much with SmartPost, which many retailers use, where FedEx picks up a package and the USPS delivers it to your doorstep.
Also not so much for First Class packages.
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